


bildungsroman

by jeunesse



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Childhood, Gen, Hospitalization, Mentions of Death, Needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8196518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeunesse/pseuds/jeunesse
Summary: Eichi can only fly as high as the ceiling goes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for the es69 prompt "children," except instead of 69 minutes this took 69 days. Thanks to Indigo for betaing.  
> I'm so emo.

They won’t tell him.

They won’t tell him anything, why he’s here, why he can’t leave, why no one has visited him. They won’t tell him for how long he’ll be here either.

Instead, they smile. _You’ll be okay_. A smile. _Does it hurt anywhere? The pain will go away after a bit._ A smile. _The doctor is always here for you_. Smile.

Eichi learns then that a smile is an adult’s lie.

♔

When the nurses think he is asleep, his eyelids still and the beeping of the heart monitor at a steady and constant pace, they start to whisper.

(He has gotten very good at faking stillness. Sometimes, he doesn’t even have to try.)

“They say he has a delicate psyche, and they don’t want to tell him until things are certain.”

“Is that really a good idea? His health gets worse every day.”

“He’s just a child.”

And then, “Even he should know if he’s going to die or not.”

The monitor stutters, and without missing another beat it beeps an accelerating staccato.

Eichi isn’t aware of when his eyes had opened, but his own wide stare meets the wide eyes of the nurses. His heartbeat is thundering in his chest, in his ears, the loudest it’s been in—he can’t remember, how long has he been in here, lying day after day in white sheets, in a white room?

“What?”

It takes him a while to realize that it’s his own voice, quiet and raspy, and that the blurring in his sight is because of tears. He can’t breathe. His throat is blocked, there’s a bubble that won’t go away, and in place of air a mounting panic fills his lungs.

He opens his mouth wide and his arms lift up—to knock over that—that _annoying_ monitor, to throw his pillow at them, to scream and wail in the silence of the room, he doesn’t know.

Instead, he coughs up blood, clutching his chest, clawing his neck.

A day later, Eichi undergoes his first surgery.

♔

His parents visit him first.

“Are you alright?” they ask, both unsure of what else to say and opting for formalities instead.

He wants to yell at them, ask why they never bothered to visit before, why they haven’t let him go home yet because _isn’t his surgery done?_

But Eichi feels sluggish, weak, nothing in his body responds properly, and so he remains silent.

His father checks his watch, taps his mother’s shoulder, and after a few more empty exchanges, they leave.

Eichi bites his lip and glares through his watery vision, throwing every threat he can think of at his tears—

They fall down anyway.

♔

Keito visits him two days later, and Eichi has forgotten what it feels like to smile, to laugh breathlessly. The corners of his mouth lift up stiffly. His eyes crinkle like awkward creases on paper. His chest aches from the force of laughter. But for the first time in what seems like years, Eichi feels wings sprout from his back. He feels weightless.

“Stop laughing,” Keito grumbles, shutting the picture book closed with a snap. “I know I can’t do funny voices.”

“Sorry,” Eichi says, wiping a tear and sounding entirely unapologetic. “I think your Alice voice was my favorite.”

Keito makes a face. “Just because you think it’s your favorite doesn’t mean it was good.”

Eichi laughs again. It hurts, but it feels good, it feels _right_.

A silence overtakes them. Keito idly bounces his shoes against each other while Eichi smooths out the wrinkles in his bedsheets. The fading orange light from sunset isn’t particularly warm, but seeing its few rays passing through the window reminds him of fire. A candle burning its last and brightest before being snuffed out by night.

“I have to go,” Keito says, and Eichi hears the sound of a clock in Keito’s voice, steady and methodical and unforgiving. “Visiting hours are almost over.”

“Do you have to go?”

It’s a question Eichi asks often, usually whining, pleading. Now, the words are quiet and sound like a statement rather than a question.

“Visiting hours are almost over,” Keito repeats, but hesitation leaks through in the timbre of his voice. “I’ll be back next weekend though. I promise.”

When Eichi doesn’t respond, Keito bites his lip, takes a deep breath, and continues.

“I...I want to tell you something. I’ve been thinking about...drawing. I like drawing.”

Eichi blinks, and then nods.

“I want to draw all kinds of things. Even greater stuff than what’s in this book. So, when I come back, I’ll bring something I made on my own. You...You can’t laugh!” Keito suddenly whips his head around to glare at Eichi. “You absolutely can’t laugh.” When Eichi nods again, Keito turns to the window, his voice dropping. “You can’t.” And,

“It’ll be so good, you’ll forget you’re even here.”

Eichi takes in Keito: his eyes screwed shut tight, the sweaty fingers clinging onto the plastic hospital chair, the flush in his ears and his neck. He closes his own eyes, burning the image into his mind as a warmth slowly spreads from his stomach to his chest.

“I didn’t know you could draw,” he says, his voice unexpectedly shaky. He clears his throat. “That’s amazing.”

“I...I can’t.”

“Then you can just practice.” When Keito finally looks up to meet his eyes, Eichi continues, “So I can forget I’m even here, right?”

Keito flushes even brighter, mumbles something incoherent under his breath, and gives a curt nod. When he leaves, he takes the last bit of sunset with him.

In the dark, Eichi dreams of what it’s like to be outside of the hospital room, to run straight ahead with legs that won’t give out, to create something with his own two hands. A life of his own, spectacular, memorable.

♔

He dreams, and he plans.

♔

He wakes up at seven. A check up at seven thirty. Breakfast at eight. Check up at eleven. Lunch at noon. Another check up at two. Dinner at five.

There’s a tree outside his window. Admittedly he has never climbed a tree before, but there is a first for everything, and he has spent enough time staring outside the glass pane to know that it’s not impossible.

Eichi brushes against the IV in his hand, fingers the tape and gauze holding it in place, and swallows. All he has to do is pull carefully, cleanly, the way the nurses do. Carefully. Cleanly. Care—

The _click-clack_ of shoes echoes outside in the hallway, getting louder and louder, and it’s not something he was expecting since no one comes at this time, he was so sure—

In a blurred moment, he pulls.

He feels as if he is a mile away from his body while he is doing so, watching his small, clumsy hands tear out the IV. He had assumed it would be simple—the nurses usually made quick, painless work of it—but he miscalculated. A dangerous assumption. He makes a note at the back of his mind to not make this sort of careless mistake again.

Blood blooms on the back of his hand, flowing down like the roots of a plant, varied and intersecting. The red makes him faint and distant and his heartbeat quickens, the blood flow quickening with the wild rhythm in his chest. But it’s free. It’s free.

He’s free.

There’s laughter coming from somewhere, a shaky, wet laughter. His right hand shakes as it covers the wound, slipping against blood pumping out in hectic beats, but he has no time to worry about this, he’ll figure it out later. Now he has to go, quickly run to the window and open it, though the likelihood of him catching a branch to hold onto with his hands this slippery has decreased it’s still _possible_ —

“Eichi?”

His head whips around to face the door just as he forces a weak, frail leg over the side of his bed, and his own wide eyes lock onto his mother’s.

No. No, no, no, _no_ , no—

“No,” he whispers, and then he’s screaming, “no, no! No! This isn’t—”

—what was supposed to happen, this isn’t what it looks like, this isn’t his fault he just wanted to go, he just wanted to be free, he doesn’t deserve this, why is she _here_ —

“Eichi!”

A desperate, bitter energy takes hold and colors his vision red, and with one last push of his bony arms, he tips over the bed and hits the floor.

♔

Adults, he realizes, often forget that children have ears.

“He was doing so well,” they would say, not far enough to be out of hearing distance. “He could have been discharged.”

It is a disappointment that stings like salt rubbed into an open wound. A shame that accumulates until it’s stifling, so unbearable he can’t lift his head to meet anyone’s eyes because _they know,_ and _they judge._

A pitiful child.

Eichi is not pitiful. He grinds his teeth, digs his nails into his palms, and he learns. He smiles. He smiles at the doctors, the nurses, his parents. He keeps his voice even, quiet, his words polite, his emotions buried.

Eichi smiles and learns that children can lie as well.

♔

They move him to a different room and station a nurse to watch him at all times. Eichi had imagined someone stern faced, more bodyguard than health practitioner, staring at him relentlessly even while he slept. Instead a bored intern sits in a corner and naps or does paperwork, only glancing over and lighting up when another nurse enters the room.

It’s a little disappointing, if he’s being honest.

Eichi tries to count the days, but he loses track and finds himself not caring. The days are still long and silent. The same room, the same people, the same schedule. He sinks into his bed and hardly remembers what it’s like to not be surrounded by white.

He used to imagine death as a sudden event. Now, he thinks this is what dying must feel like.

♔

“Are you listening?”

Keito peers at him over the top of his glasses, mouth tugging down into a frown.

The words take a while to register. Eventually, Eichi smiles and says, “Sorry, I must not be feeling well.” It’s not a lie—he can’t remember the last time he felt “well,” when he didn’t feel weak and distorted. A fake life form, barely a shadow of a human being.

Keito doesn’t do much more than look at him, and yet his gaze makes Eichi more certain of how twisted he must be.

“Should I call the nurse?” Keito asks, and Eichi wants to laugh. Kind, considerate Keito.

“No, it’s not that bad,” Eichi says, smiling again. “What were you saying?”

“Now that I’m going to junior high, I can’t visit you as often anymore.”

“Oh.” There is no ‘we,’ he notices, in ‘junior high.’ “Is school starting again? Time sure flies.”

“It’s a pain. I won’t be able to draw as much as I want anymore either.”

He keeps the smile plastered on while Keito shows him his sketchbook, completely filled out from front to back. He talks about how he stayed up all night drawing and fell asleep during morning meditation, how he had to clean the entire temple as punishment but really he spent half the time sketching out new ideas on paper he had snuck out. How, truthfully, nervous he is when he thinks about bringing his drawings to the hospital and that _Eichi_ is going to see them, that when _Eichi_ seems to like it he’s incredibly happy, that this happiness is something incomparable to something as trivial as grades, how—

How annoying.

The bitterness of the words lie heavy on his tongue, though he did not voice them. Eichi imagines the way Keito would choke mid-sentence, the way his features would crumple into themselves, withering away one by one like petals on a flower.

“Keito,” he says, cutting off the other abruptly. You’re annoying. Annoying. “I’m feeling sick after all. Is it okay if we end the visit early today?”

Keito blinks, donning a habitual frown. “That’s fine. You don’t have to force yourself.” He reaches out to gently push Eichi back into bed and clumsily pulls up the covers all the way up to his chin. The sheets are itchy and confining.

Dry laughter climbs from his chest in an uncomfortable rasp of air. “You’re like an angel of death.”

“...Huh?”

“It’s nothing,” Eichi says, smiling placidly. “Have fun at school.”

♔

An hour after Keito leaves, Eichi realizes he had left his sketchbook behind.

He considers flipping through it, ripping off its pages, and throwing it out the window, but the thought of even touching it makes him nauseous. He leaves it alone instead, a ghost of today’s visit sitting on the chair that Keito occupied.

It haunts him the rest of the day with promises and hopes and dreams—a book full of everything he will never have, and Eichi smothers his face into his pillow and pulls his blanket over his head, imagining it as the lid of a coffin.

♔

The new intern has taken to turning on the television and falling asleep in a matter of minutes, which is how Eichi finds himself watching mind numbing programs, memorizing commercial jingles, and falling asleep to laugh tracks.

It’s also how he finds himself watching a live music festival in the middle of a summer afternoon. The hot, humid air coming in from the window is irritating enough, but the sight of an entire crowd willingly huddling under the relentless sunlight, uselessly waving their arms and wasting energy is just as irritating—just thinking about it gives him a headache.

The performers on stage move around even more, their dancing taking on a frenzied edge as sweat beads their foreheads, their lungs visibly expanding while they belt out lyrics drowned out by the screaming crowd. They smile brightly, blindingly, and for a moment Eichi is reminded of Keito’s expression while he talks about his drawings.

Eichi’s lips purse into a thin line and he draws back into his bed as if stung.

He watches the performers leap and run as if they had wings instead of shoes, and—they’re laughing. They’re enjoying themselves. But Eichi knows, happiness isn’t so easily attained and flaunted, that it’s an illusion. His own wings are melted and broken.

His legs twitch and his fingers dig into his thighs.

He knows frustration is pointless when there is nothing his diminutive hands can achieve. He knows his body is as useless as trash. Failure is inevitable. Facts are facts.

And yet.

There is an envy poisoning his organs, eating away at his mind and filling it with a suffocating longing. A drum pounds in his chest to the beat of the performers' song, rattling his lungs with its tremors, silencing his thoughts and echoing a desire he hasn't dared to acknowledge till now.

He wants to _live_.

If only he had the energy, the strength, to move like the performers do—what a different life he would be living. If only he had been smarter, more careful. He wouldn't have failed as miserably as he had, he would be flying to his heart’s content.

The song on television fades, but his heart still beats wildly, chasing away his paralyzing fear and cowardice into the shadows. He feels oddly exposed and his hands tremble as they go to cover his face, only to draw back in surprise when he feels tears on his cheeks. For some reason, this makes him cry harder.

♔

A restlessness eventually replaces his tears and puts all his nerves on edge. He clenches and unclenches his hands, his gaze set on the now blank television screen, and let's himself _want_.

♔

The next time he dreams, he’ll do it right.


End file.
